Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0 Has Another Possible Launch Date – November

Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0), or Serenity, is “well on track” for a launch later this year, according to Afri Schoedon, release manager at blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies and ex-Ethereum developer – and unless there is a critical problem found, there is no reason to push it to 2021.

Speaking to Paradigm, “the pioneer of ETH2 multi-clinet testnets,” as the investment firm focused on blockchain and cryptoassets described him, said that the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain will launch in November unless “severe bugs” are found in clients or protocol.

“I’m in-between Vitalik [Buterin] and Justin [Drake] with my estimation here, I don’t think that we necessarily need to delay Ethereum 2.0 into 2021 unless we find critical issues. We are well on track for a late 2020 launch,” Shoedon said.

As reported, earlier in July, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said that Phase 0 might go live in January of 2021 at the earliest, while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that he “personally quite disagree[s] with this” and that he “would favor launching phase 0 significantly before that date regardless of level of readiness :D.”

Multi-client testnets have often been deemed final steps before the launch of the long-awaited Phase 0 of ETH 2.0, aka the Beacon Chain of Serenity, as multi-client networks are needed for ETH 2.0 clients created by various developers and companies to communicate with the same protocol. Coders from Prysm and Lighthouse released a multi-client testnet Schlesi in April.

Schlesi was then replaced by the recently launched Altona, a testnet focused on developers instead of the end-users, and controlled initially by the constituent client teams, namely Lighthouse, Prysm, Nimbus, Teku, Afri, and some of the Ethereum Foundation team members.

As “the initiator of ETH2 multi-client testnets,” Shoedon said that Altona “appears to be stable,” and that everything accomplished with the testnets so far is done in preparation for “the official multi-client testnet Medalla very soon, which would mark the final step towards an Ethereum 2.0 mainnet launch.”

Meanwhile, back in May, Buterin, stated that Phase 0 of ETH 2.0 is “on track” and that it could launch in Q3.

At pixel time (12:29 PM UTC), ETH trades at USD 244 and is up by 2% in a day and 1% in a week.